This Just In: OCZ Vertex 2 SandForce-1200 SSD with Special Sauce
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 22, 2010 2:38 PM EST- Posted in
- This Just In
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
Next week I'll have more to report on than just SSDs, I promise. Until then, the SandForce festivities continue with today's arrival: The OCZ Vertex 2.
As you may have heard, the Vertex 2 uses a special brew of SandForce's SF-1200 firmware that gives it the small file random write performance of a SF-1500 based solution, without most of the added cost. Unless Corsair and SandForce work something out, the Vertex 2 is going to be the only SF-1200 based SSD that can use SandForce's MP firmware and attain 30,000 sustained 4K random write IOPS.
I'm running the drive through the ringer now and hope to have results as well as an update to our SSD Bench later this week. If you want to see pics of its internals, check out the gallery.
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Voo - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link
They probably wanted to test the firmware without having to keep track of all those limitations they'd have to add to the 1200 fw. You want to get something as complicated at this fw probably to run, before starting with those probably easy to implement ahm "features".As long as the firms knew that those limitations would be in the MP fw I really can't see anything wrong with that - as pointed out many other businesses do the same and I don't think MS really needs more business consultants or whatsoever.
JohnMD1022 - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
Tell that to MS :)Voo - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
Yeah I had to grin too when I read that. So obviously MS is missing business analysts - interesting analysis ;)_Q_ - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Sorry for being a little off-topic (still SSD though)...Are there any news on when is the Indilinx JetStream going to be released in some drive from any vendor?
Cause as far as I know, this was initially going to be out in end of 2009, then there was a delay... but no further info that I could find more recently.
Thanks for any help.
PS: Anand, thanks for the reviews!
The0ne - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I applaud those of you willing and wealthy enough to be using SSDs at this point in time. As I've said many times already, this platform isn't stable yet (IMO of course) and if you can wait, just wait it out. All these fiddling around with firmware should worry you as a consumer. It worries me as an engineer! When software/firmware is constantly changing it's usually not a good sign; but that's not 100% true all the time. I pray it's not true with your SSDs.irev210 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Maybe at first, you could make the "not yet stable" argument, but times have changed - and they changed some time ago.Taft12 - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
False. Even Anand himself has had reliability problems with latest-gen SSD technology. There have been widespread reports of high failure rates of non-Intel SSD's rolled out to corporate laptops.Voo - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
Yeah and HDDs have been without any problems for the last few years! It's not as if Seagate killed a whole bunch of drives with faulty fir.. oh damn. So you're using tapes for mass storage? Those are pretty reliable, not that fast or useable, but who cares about that._Q_ - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
As with most products, do not buy the 1st versions coming out - there is no amount of QA testing in any company that replaces thousands of users with different setups/configs using a product for a few months (as Anand, points out, buy these new very fast SandForce ones, at your own risk).So, with SSDs, and specially these with new architectures, double that precaution, but any Indilinx or Intel can be considered stable enough, now.
As for money, most people can buy a 30Gb SSD - I will simply ignore people that say that is not enough space. It is enough to have the OS and couple more things - and the OS alone makes a difference! If someone does not want to see that, it is their problem.
Also, I've read of people (at some companies) that upgraded laptops with SSDs instead of buying new ones. Since any 60Gb SSD is enough for work purposes (95% of the cases at least), so $180 (OCZ Vertex @ Newegg) instead of a new laptop, seems like a _bargain_.
In other words, it all depends on your starting point and your expectancies. Of course I would agree in saying someone trying to make a new computer with 1Tb intel SLC SSDs for instance needs to be loaded! ;)
dmayes - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Anand please tell me that your going to have atleast one benchmark with the new Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 9.6. I've heard it makes a big difference.